Painting Space – Interview with Danny Rolph繪畫的天地 – 專訪藝術家丹尼·羅爾夫

British artist Danny Rolph excels in juggling his artistic practice, international exhibitions, teaching in numerous prestigious institutions, and family life. Always enthusiastic and impeccably friendly, Rolph is an artist of formidable determination who enjoys the uncertainty in his artistic creation, maintains a certain British privacy and at once a warm hospitality, and deals brilliantly with all aspects of life in and out of his cozy studio.

DR: Funny – he was one of my tutors on foundation at Saint Martins in 1986!

DR: 真的嗎？我1986年在中央聖馬丁藝術與設計學院學習時他是我的老師！

ART.ZIP: And before he was not perfectly comfortable working with other people around.

ART.ZIP: 約翰遜不太希望在工作時被打擾。對他來說，在工作室里的訪客或是助手都可能成為他的一個困擾。

DR: Does he feel too self-conscious?

DR: 是不是因為他的自我意識太強了？

ART.ZIP: Not really, we think he just prefer a quiet environment.

ART.ZIP: 那倒也不是，我們覺得他就是更喜歡安靜的環境來創作。

DR: Well, I always have music on and sometimes I dance! I’m often walking around looking up close at something or looking at the studio door, scratching my head, reading books, I have a lot of books in the studio and read all the time, so if you had a CCTV on me you would think I was a crazy animal going slowly out of its mind — dancing his way into oblivion!

ART.ZIP: But that’s the thing about private space, you can do whatever you want.

ART.ZIP: 這就是個人空間的意義，不是嗎？你想做甚麼就做甚麼。

DR: It’s ridiculous isn’t it ? you find yourself cutting up things, doing mundane things, sweeping the floor but it is the privacy that matters. And it is a great place to start. For me, as a studio-based artist, I’m continuously making work. Lots of my artist friends, my contemporaries, who I grew up around may work towards one show at a time, but because I show internationally in different galleries I’m constantly working on many paintings and drawings, from which I can extract and create an exhibition out of. Lots of other artists work in a much more thematic way –- they make a body of work which they want to show together — I’m not really interested in that. I’m interested in a slightly more old fashioned model of say Picasso or Matisse, where what you did you then took from to put into a show. The narrative develops out of what you have chosen to show. So for me, it’s a very studio based activity and the core, the hub, is an extension of the eyes and the brain embedded in the space and this need for privacy is very important. I have a great assistant who comes in once a fortnight and there is always lots to be done, but she doesn’t help with any of the work. The studio is a very special place. Imagine in the 1920s or 30s pilots flying aeroplanes, how did they navigate? They were looking at the stars, if they were flying at night for example, and it’s almost like flying at night in here, but I have little interest in where I’m going, I’m more interested in what I am doing.